Word: plante
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...would the forebears of Bob Lloyd, the Missourian who runs Bodine Aluminum in St. Louis and nearby Troy. Here Japanese workers hold Shinto ceremonies to celebrate milestones such as a new furnace or the casting of the 1 millionth engine part. "Our people think the plant ceremonies are a riot," says Lloyd...
...freighter Toyota Maru in Long Beach, California. Yet even as Toyota improved its cars and gained market share, the company remained reluctant to build them on American soil. Not until 1985, when Honda and Nissan were already producing cars in the U.S., did Toyota decide to build the Georgetown plant. The company has since been at pains to avoid such stereotypes as those spoofed in the 1986 Michael Keaton comedy, Gung Ho, which depicted Japanese managers holding fire drill-like pep rallies and speeding up assembly lines to a Chaplinesque frenzy. Toyota responded in methodical fashion: it bought copies...
...Americanized itself at a rapid pace, which accelerated last year after a nasty trade dispute in which the Clinton Administration threatened to slap a 100% tariff on luxury cars like Toyota's Lexus. Shortly afterward, Toyota executives swooped into Indiana to pick a site for the T100 truck plant and sped up the timetable for the new West Virginia factory. Says senior vice president Jim Olson, a 16-year Ford veteran who joined Toyota in 1985: "It will now be very difficult for the Big Three to attack us as the enemy at the border. We're across the border...
...beginning, some locals like Randy Sinkhorn, a fifth-generation Kentuckian who trains welders and other hands at the Georgetown plant, had to overcome deep-seated doubts about working for the Japanese. Even today, Sinkhorn says, laughing, people outside the area want to know, "'Do you work like a dog 15 and 20 hours a day?'" He says he doesn...
...Bodine Aluminum, Lloyd still ruefully recalls the day the new Troy plant produced the first intake manifold to be rejected--after three months and 60,000 defect-free parts. The lapse "was immediately followed by an eight-hour meeting the next day," says Lloyd, who has had to adjust to the Japanese penchant for such talkathons. "Before, if I wanted to do X, I could do X," Lloyd says, "but now we have to meet for three days. They want everyone to be on board." Bodine has cut its initial reject rate from 20% to less than 2%. Even better...